Marathon effort nets funding for research

BY DAN NEWMAN
Staff Writer

Florence McCarthy HOLMDEL — For anybody who has ever run the New York City Marathon, there is always at least one part of the 26.2-mile course that breaks a person down. For some, it’s the desolate mile-long stretch that takes runners through the South Bronx after 20 miles of racing. Others face difficulty on the undulating hills of First Avenue in Manhattan at the 17-mile mark.

For Florence McCarthy, her moment of truth came prior to even hitting the streets of Manhattan or The Bronx.

“The Queensboro Bridge was very tough. It just felt like one huge uphill to me and it was rough,” McCarthy said of one tough spot during the Nov. 6 race. “I had to walk up the bridge just to get through it. I was not quitting. I never thought about it even once.”

McCarthy, 39, was not running the race for herself, but for her daughter, Aidan, 5, who suffers from neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder of the nervous system that can cause tumors to grow on the nerves, change skin color and deformity of bones.

Aidan was diagnosed with the disease at 4 months and had it confirmed at 12 months. Since then, Florence says that some tumors have spread.

“It hasn’t had a big effect on her medically, but anytime she has a headache, you never know if it can turn into something worse,” McCarthy said. “Plus, she has appointments all the time with a speech therapist and an occupational therapist.”

In order to do her part in raising awareness for neurofibromatosis, McCarthy decided she would raise funds and compete in the 2005 ING New York City Marathon. The idea was actually hatched at last year’s race.

“I asked a friend of mine to run on Aidan’s behalf. I did the fund-raising and my friend ran the race,” McCarthy explained.

It seemed simple enough at the time. The race went off without a hitch, with Florence sitting at the finish line watching her friend take care of business. But then she wanted to do even more than she had already done.

“I really thought I could do more for the cause,” McCarthy said. “I spoke to some friends about maybe doing the race and they thought it would be a good idea. I was learning how to swim, and so I figured that would only help me with my endurance once I got prepared to actually start training.”

New York City is not like most other marathons in that it requires many of the 37,000-person field to apply through a lottery system and hope their name is selected from nearly 90,000 entries.

McCarthy did not gain entry through the lottery, but she learned that if she could raise $10,000, the sponsoring New York Road Runners Club would allow her to race.

McCarthy wrote to as many people as she could in her quest to raise the necessary money so that she could toe the starting line in Staten Island on Nov. 6. More than $27,000 later, she fulfilled her fund-raising goal. Now it was time for her to accomplish her athletic goal.

“I trained all summer for the marathon and did plenty of long runs in preparation,” McCarthy said.

McCarthy described her run through Brooklyn as “great — what a party!”. Following the arduous climb up the Queensboro Bridge, McCarthy set her sights on First Avenue in Manhattan, a location where many world famous runners have tried to win the race, only to falter and never recover.

“I had to run First Avenue. If I didn’t, it was going to be rough the rest of the way,” McCarthy said. “First Avenue was not as intense as I thought it would be.”

Once she was done with the nearly 3-mile-long stretch of First Avenue, McCarthy walked over the Willis Avenue Bridge, which connects Manhattan and the Bronx, and the Madison Avenue Bridge, which leads back into Manhattan.

“My feet were killing me, but I knew I was almost done. The longest I had gone in my training was 18 miles, but I knew I could make it,” McCarthy said.

Running along Central Park South with just a mile to go, McCarthy came upon a familiar sight, one that would help propel her to the finish line.

“I saw my entire family standing at mile 25. I stopped and took some pictures. There had to be 25 or 30 people there waiting for me and it felt great,” McCarthy said. “From there, I ran the last mile. It was so surreal.”

Almost a year after choosing to run the most famous race in the world and nearly six-and-a-half hours after starting her trek from the foot of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge to Central Park, McCarthy achieved her goal.

“It’s all settling in now. I finished the New York City Marathon,” she said.

After taking time for a well-deserved rest, McCarthy said she has her sights set on a new goal.

“I definitely want to run another one, maybe Chicago. It’s nice and flat, unlike New York,” McCarthy said.

“I certainly realize it was important for me to do this and help to raise funds and awareness,” McCarthy said. “Running didn’t really benefit anybody, but the fundraising did. I hope that what I did will open the eyes of many others out there.”